Valentine's Day will see the launch of a boutique stock collection featuring new work and highlights from over 30 years of photography by Doug Menuez.
We have done a bad job. A terrible job. If picking a photograph is all about its price and not its quality than we, the photo industry, have made a terrible job at selling our work.
Every time an editor, whether from an ad agency or a magazine decides to use an image because it is cheaper than the others, that means we have all failed to advocate for the real value of photography. We have failed, all of us, Photographers, agents, photo agencies to make the new generation of image buyers see the real value in our images. Thus the current situation.
In the near future, the vast majority of professional photographers will be unable to earn enough from producing stock images to offset their cost of production.
Illinois-based Commercial Research Image Archives has launched CriaImages.com, which offers more historical and contemporary images at flat rates on a royalty-free basis. The archive was founded by author and historian Jay Robert Nash and thus has a distinctly editorial feel, featuring notable people, things and events throughout history.
There are two ways to approach shooting for the stock photo market. The first is to take images you love and hope that someone will want to pay you for them. The more businesslike approach is to try to determine what customers want, and one thing that is beneficial is that the subject matter in demand has not changed: what customers wanted five, 10 or 20 years ago is still in demand today.
The people behind ImagesBazaar.com say its 800,000+ inventory makes it the world's largest collection of Indian images. Since India is emerging as a leading market for a growing range of products and services, the company says it has seen a surge in demand for images that show Indian faces in local settings.
AudioMicro continues the trend of microstock sellers offering upmarket products with the launch of a Platinum Collection.
The United Kingdom is engaged in hot debate over the long-awaited legislation that promises to usher in a new and improved digital economy. The British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies has weighed in with objections to extended licensing and orphan-works clauses, which the organization says could have significant detrimental effects on the photo industry.
Photography should
be a revolutionary act. It should be a kick in the establishment, the
common, the mundane. It has to be an act of revolt against banality and
conformity, a powerful explosion of new ideas. It should be as violent
to the mind as a thousand thunderstorms. It should rip apart the
accepted social fabric . It should denounce, point, accuse and solve.
In one frame. It should be a declaration of war to everything we take
for granted and accept as obvious.
PicScout and Idee have long been neck-in-neck in offering image-tracking solutions and underlying image recognition technology. The latest announcement from Idee founder Leila Boujnane suggests the two companies may continue competing on another turf: online image attribution.
With all the free information available on the Internet why would or should anyone want to pay for information?
Many consumers believe that writers should give away their work in
order to build a following of customers who will then pay them for some
other product or service they provide. Most would acknowledge that some
effort and expense is required on the part of the creator to produce
good, useful information, but often that is not deemed to be of any
economic value. Photographers tend to supply information on their blogs
as a way of getting customers to hire them for assignment work, for
paid speaking engagements or as a way of selling a book. The other way
to earn revenue is to generate enough traffic to your site that
advertisers will pay to surround your information with ads in hopes
that some or your popularity will rub off on them. Is giving away information the only way?
Fotolia has notified production companies that contribute to its Infinite Collection that in future they will only be paid 40% of sales, instead of the 50% they have been receiving. Independent contributors to the Infinite Collection retain the 50% commission rate.
London-based Image Source is making its entire collection available to users of PicScout ImageExchange. There are currently over 20 companies participating in the beta PicScout offering.
Though some editorial uses are permissible, photographs of many products and locations cannot be used for commercial purposes without a release. Blanket releases for images of such subjects are almost impossible to obtain. It is sometimes possible to get a release for a very specific, clearly defined use, but not for an undefined "stock use." Therefore, if the stock photographer's goal is to license images as stock, he or she should avoid wasting time photographing such subject matter.
Born in 1928 in New York, Magnum photographer Dennis Stock passed away in Sarasota, Fla., on January 11. He was 81 years old.
Take Stock, the historic image collection founded by photographer Matt Herron, is now available exclusively through Woodstock-based The Image Works. The collection features historic coverage of the civil rights and farm workers movements.
"Sales of $1 images continued to generate six-figure incomes for the world's top photographers in 2009," begins the Fotolia press release that highlights the company's three top-selling images for last year. Combined, the three Fotolia top sellers gathered around 10,000 downloads, so the photographers' earnings are nowhere near as impressive as Fotolia claims; however, the images themselves offer an interesting perspective into current buyer needs.
A friend who has been on the periphery of the photo industry for decades now works for a company that manages social media and search engine optimization for a variety of clients, including law firms. She said her office mates disagree on what they are allowed to do with pictures they find on news Web sites. She asked: "Are bloggers allowed to illustrate their blog entries with photos they find on news sites, such as a photo of a sinkhole? What are the rules about using editorial images in a blog post?"
Getty Images will now be the exclusive global distributor of the imagery produced by The Washington Post's team of photojournalists. The move bolsters Getty's editorial image offering.
Getty Images will now be the exclusive global distributor of the imagery produced by The Washington Post's team of photojournalists. The move bolsters Getty's editorial image offering.